How to throw a bowling party for children

At some point or another, most parents have flipped through the children's party section of a Martha Stewart style magazine and shuddered. If the thought of spending your evenings sewing bunting or intricately icing dozens of cupcakes makes you want to tear your hair out, don't stress.

You don't have to be a Pinterest parent to throw a kid a good celebration. Come on down to ZONE BOWLING for a children's birthday venue that will guarantee a good time for the little people in your life. Keep these things in mind and your bowling party will go smoothly.

Add a fun twist to the typical bowling game.

While a ten pin bowling party inherently means your guests will have something to do, you can make things a bit more interesting by adding extra goals for players. Set a bunch of achievements for children to 'unlock,' like bowling backwards, in slow motion or with a blindfold.

Another fun children's party game involves getting each child to pull a topic out of a hat before they bowl. These could include things like pizza toppings, pop singers or cartoons. Similar to Scattergories, the aim of the game is for the player to list as many things from that topic as they can in the time limit. The clock starts the minute the ball leaves their fingertips and ends once it reaches the end of the lane.

As always, give out prizes to children who score well in these games, and also to children who do well at the bowling itself. It's also best to have an adult supervising these games, to make sure everything goes fairly.

Keep all competition in good spirit.

Not every child will take to bowling - and that's perfectly okay. It is, however, important that children who aren't getting strikes every turn are still having fun.

A brilliant way to ensure this is happening is to create competitions so that each child will go home with a personalised trophy filled with lollies (the fastest way to any tiny human's heart). You could also have these double as the party's goodie bags. You don't even have to stick to the traditional rules of bowling. Give out prizes for the most creative bowling position, the best bowling joke or even the most gutter balls.

Your child doesn't need lavish decorations, a strict colour scheme and a two-metre ice sculpture to have a good day. At ZONE BOWLING, we believe that a classic game played with friends and family is the best sort of celebration there is. That's just how we bowl.